TEHRAN: Iran warned Israel and the United States against any aggression, as it proudly paraded its troops and military hardware yesterday under the gaze of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and top brass.
The Tehran parade, involving thousands of military personnel, dozens of tanks and missiles borne on trucks, marked the anniversary of the start of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.
Ahmadinejad, in a speech broadcast on state television, said that Iran was using “the same spirit and belief in itself” shown in that war to “stand and defend its rights” today against pressure from world powers.
Top Iranian generals said the show of military might should be digested by Israel, which in recent weeks has ramped up threats that it could hit Iranian nuclear facilities.
“We do not feel threatened by the nonsense uttered by that regime’s leaders,” the chief of Iran’s armed forces, General Hassan Firouzabadi, told the Fars news agency, adding that Iran’s response to any attack would be “immediate and unstoppable.”
General Ataollah Selehi, the commander of Iran’s army, told the ISNA news agency that “us holding a military parade is for deterrence and not a threat.”
He and other military leaders renewed their pledge that Israel would be annihilated if attacked.
The head of the Revolutionary Guards’ aerospace division in charge of missile defense, Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hahjizadeh, repeated Iran’s promise to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz if the Islamic republic were attacked or Western sanctions halted its crude exports.
“If one day the Strait of Hormuz has no benefit for us, then we will deprive others from benefiting from it,” he said.
However he added that “under current conditions, there is no problem.”
Hahjizadeh also dismissed navy war games currently being held by the United States and 30 other nations in the Gulf as “no threat to us.”
In his speech, Ahmadinejad also touched on an anti-Islam film made in America by an extremist Christian group that has fueled violent protests in parts of the Muslim world.
